


Each and Ev'ry Highway

by blueskypenguin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-28
Updated: 2011-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueskypenguin/pseuds/blueskypenguin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re united in their watching over him. “And it isn’t as though she wants him to die; she just wants to be the one there to hand him over to Heaven when he does.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Each and Ev'ry Highway

**Author's Note:**

> For mf_luder_xf on LJ for SPN Rare Pairs Ficathon in 2010.

For the longest time, they didn’t acknowledge one another.

Castiel wasn’t always present for Dean’s brushes with his own mortality and Tessa had better things to do than hang around the Winchesters while they lived out their lives. Still, whenever Dean inched closer to shuffling off his mortal coil, she would find herself drawn there, ready for him with the words and the understanding he would need.

Tessa had been thwarted at various points: she’d been somehow excluded from the time loop he’d been caught in, and a Reaper had no place in a private contract with Hell. To top it off, Castiel had _personally_ interfered in Dean’s most recent visit to Heaven, giving Tessa no room to do her job.

(She was still pissed about that.)

Now the brothers were together and _saving people, hunting things_ once more, Tessa had more work on her hands where Dean Winchester was concerned. His brush with Death himself hadn’t given her pause; Death wouldn’t bother himself with one human, even one he’d been forced to deal with personally.

Dean was hers to deal with, now.

* * *

He finally breaks his silence as they watch, unseen, as Dean and his brother battle a coven of particularly put-out Satanic witches.

This one could go either way, and they both have a vested interest in the outcome.

“It will not be this time,” he says.

Tessa doesn’t shrug, doesn’t acknowledge the flat, even _sure_ declaration with anything more than a pointed statement of her own: “It could be.”

They don’t say anything else.

The hex bags are found, the book is burned to ashes, their demonic puppet-master is exorcised with spectacular force and the witches are abandoned to pick up the pieces of their lives.

Tessa leaves before Castiel can say, _I told you so._

* * *

There are a few times she comes close to being needed, a few more where she’s certain it’s only Castiel’s interference that prevents it.

Once, perhaps twice, she’s certain Dean is close enough to see her. At that, the undiluted grief which fills her is hard to ignore. (She tries anyway. She shouldn’t be subject to such illogical emotions; what Reaper experiences grief of all things?)

She continues to attend these windows of his life. She tells herself it’s _’just in case’_ , but she knows she’s grasping at straws.

* * *

“Do you not have other souls to attend to?”

“Not right now,” she replies flippantly.

Castiel hangs back from the brothers, invisible just as she is, and looks anxious - even though Tessa knows they both can tell that the two Winchesters will make it out of this fight alive.

As the brothers clearly gain the upper hand, Castiel relaxes. His frown, however, remains.

“Why do you come for him when it isn’t his time?”

“Why do you come when it could be?” Tessa counters. “It is my duty to see him to the other side.”

“Not yours specifically.” The angel refuses to look at her and it offends her pride.

Still, she isn’t going to be reprimanded by an angel, not when he has less of a reason than her to be skulking in the shadows of Dean Winchester’s life. Tessa raises one shoulder ever so slightly in the suggestion of a shrug; more casual and far more human than she feels. “Including Death himself, Dean has dealt with me most often. I feel... responsible for his passing.”

Their silences are as pointed as their brief, opaque conversations. As Dean deals the killing blow to the vampire, Castiel turns his back on the fight to speak directly with Tessa. “You’re overly invested.”

 _Hitting the nail on the head_ , is the expression that springs to Tessa mind. “As are you,” she replies; with an arch of an eyebrow and with no response from Castiel, she leaves. Other charges require her attention.

* * *

Tessa doesn’t notice the pattern until Dean’s little guardian archangel points it out; the relish and distaste with which he does so are far more telling than he realises. “You only attend for the dangerous brushes with mortality,” he says, his voice deceptively mild as they watch Dean and his brother stalk a wendigo through some underground tunnels.

It’s true that she has felt the pull of other such moments – near collisions between his precious cars and other, more reckless vehicles; a cold that almost developed into pneumonia; the swipe of an unhappy bar-fly’s knife when he realised he’d been cheated out of a few hundred crisp bills – and ignored them, instead turning to the terminal moments of less auspicious men, women and children.

But Dean is too lucky, too skilled, too worthy to fall to a car crash (again), sickness or a knife-wound from a drunk. The only dangers are the close-calls, the beasts and burdens of his life as a hunter.

It won’t be something natural that takes out Dean Winchester for good.

And it isn’t as though she wants him to die; she just wants to be the one there to hand him over to Heaven when he does.

She’s said nothing to Castiel as these thoughts chase each other around her consciousness. She refuses to look at him at all, focussing instead on the careful progress Dean makes as he sneaks up, advancing on his target. Castiel huffs impatiently; very inappropriate behaviour for an angel, Tessa thinks.

“You covet his death,” he says savagely.

Tessa turns to Castiel quickly. “I covet his life, angel.” She spits his nature like a curse. “I have responsible for Dean’s everlasting soul since before his deal was made with Hell. You have interfered before, but when his time comes I swear to you, I will deliver him on behalf of Death himself for your Father alone to judge.

“I know why I am here,” she continues, softer as Castiel looks away, almost abashed. “Why are you?”

He says nothing, because their entire acquaintance is a chronicle of silence and unveiled enmity, but as she thinks over her own words, it dawns on her why they are so antagonistic and why Castiel is so keen to see Dean’s final moments, such as they may be.

She knows little of Heaven but what Death can tell and the souls in her temporary care believe. Once upon a time, she thinks she had a belief in Heaven, but if that were true, she supposed she wouldn’t have chosen advocating for Death.

Those bound for Heaven rarely choose to avoid it.

What she does know is that Castiel, in those moments when Dean comes too near to a tooth or claw, is tense and flighty, grief-stricken and sick. The angel’s relief when Dean walks away alive is more than it would be if he had any chance of seeing Dean in heaven.

“You love him,” she says with certainty. “And you cannot keep him.”

His face is a mask of surprise and resignation. He nods and looks away. “Things are different now. The two realms of Heaven are separate, and all of Heaven quakes should an angel enter the human paradise. When Dean dies, he will be lost to me.”

Tessa watches as Dean strides away, the wendigo dead and the Winchesters safe for another day. “He cannot live forever.”

* * *

It was a hair’s-breadth too close, and Dean finds himself in a delirious haze as he comes out of surgery under general anaesthetic and a fake name. She is, for once, alone by his bedside; his brother is running paperwork circles around the nurses and Castiel is ...anywhere but here.

Dean’s gaze takes a few seconds to focus on her, and she moves into his line of sight more clearly. He doesn’t seem alarmed – surprised, yes, but not worried - but then Dean Winchester is not a man who fears death.

Repetitious exposure has cured that of him, at least.

“Long time no see,” he greets her softly. “Not official business, I hope.”

“You’ll live,” she replies with a conspiratorial air, more glib than she thinks she may feel. The grin she receives in return is all the reassurance she didn’t know she wanted. “You were a little closer than usual, however.”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“Obviously.”

“Say,” Dean tries to push himself up a little, anything other than the apparent weakness he feels in lying down in the presence of a reaper. After moment or two, he stops. The IV is tugging, the sheets are bunching around him and he’s out of breath already. “Isn’t this how we met?”

She finds it difficult to imagine that he’s feeling nostalgic. “Yes. I must say, the circumstances are better this time around.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

Silence rolls through the room and even the beeping machinery seems duller.

“One day you’re going to have to take me,” Dean says tiredly. “None of this brief encounter, ships in the night crap.”

Tessa snorts inelegantly, and wonders when humanity seeped in through the barriers separating life and death. “If your angel doesn’t get in the way.”

“What?”

“Castiel,” she bites out the name as nicely as she can, but clearly fails to cover her ire as Dean adds a touch of amusement to his confusion, “has interfered before in your many and varied deaths.”

Dean’s brow knits and he clearly is trying to remember something that isn’t there. “We got shot,” he says. “You weren’t there for that.”

“No,” she says, because she’s never attended Dean’s fraying thread for a gunshot wound. “He managed to get around the natural order then, somehow.”

He shrugs a little, but the confusion has cleared and there’s a fond smile tugging his mouth. “Sounds like Cas. Not one for following the rules nowadays.”

Tessa wouldn’t know; besides, it seems there are some rules Castiel must follow.

“Will you be there, then? For the final curtain?”

“I plan to be, yes,” Tessa replies before they’re interrupted by a shift in the air and a swish of a coat. He didn’t fly, but the appearance of Castiel in the doorway, eyeing her balefully, is sudden enough that it could have been. Dean’s brother is at the angel’s side radiating confusion.

Tessa knows this is her cue to leave and she strides forward slowly, feeling the angel’s eyes on her with every silent step.

Ever the opportunist, Dean nods as he realises her intention to go and asks when he’ll see her again. “’Cuz you don’t call,” he quips tiredly, “You don’t write...”

“I’ll be seeing you, Dean,” she promises as she kisses him softly, his mouth pliant and warm beneath her own. “It’s not your time, yet.”


End file.
